The Invaders

[preliminary meditations towards the Osnabrueck
conference on language and identity]
Given:
When he saw the shape of the cloud
over the monastery dining hall
a foreign word came quickly [ko.mong]
to his nearby mind,
O yes
it is the words
who are the aliens
oyez oyez
they have lived here with us
nearer than mitochondria
they moved into our brains and altered
our minds over millennia
Harappa, oyez, Sumeria.
Every language
is a foreign language,
an invasion
from outside of space.
1.
That it may come to rest
and be an apple, a miracle
the way hands work
tugging yarn snug on the loom
and cutting free. We have come
to the inside-out of myth
as if one morning suddenly
but normally enough, without a word
the river stopped.
2.
Last works
and lost words
a kind of triangulation
or a weather in the heart of number.
3.
If you show us your thinking
there is nothing to attend to
without a story
the mind can do nothing with thinking.
The doors of the subway car
remain open a brief uncertain time,
sitting there, can you tell from
who is getting on and who is
getting out which way to go?
Examine, traveler, and sit still.
4.
Of course one has to go to Germany
thats where they keep most language
nowadays, on parade,
especially in the Lutheran parts
which look suspiciously at other arts
---philology alone is good for you---
and find painting colorless and sculpture barren.
Freilich muss man nach Deutschland fahren.
5.
Come rest
between permissions
these comforts
long denied you
now deserve you
rest after speaking
the breasts of silence
the milks are different,
their comfort mixed
silence inside words
or after them,
two orders of our declaration,
wild carrots, clover, ragweed, poetry.
6.
Elegant enough, a pastor visits his sheep.
On bike in a black short sleeve shirt with cleric collar
zipping matins-ward in morning dew
and you call this a Protestant?
We have so many names
nomina numina
to call,
call at going and at coming,
calling,
sheep bleat on the moor.
7.
And there is more. A barrage
below the Temple, a dirigible caught in some trees.
Dogs bark up at it as if the moon their god
had finally come down to earth
to them, to teach them language
(a sound goes through the mind before it speaks)
And the rabbits are Victorian!
And the airplanes with broken landing gear
rest crooked on the ancient lawn
and the world is over already
like a dream unpacking into day.
8.
Remember Isis. The night she lay
on the bed beside Thoth
chaste in the cheapo hotel,
a scandal beyond the reach of theology,
that they would dare to touch,
that they would do no more than touch?
What does it mean when to a small nowhere city
the gods come calling, jostling
and goosing people on the street, whistling, spitting
and walking nude their fawns in shabby parks,
splashing through the fountain under the mean
monument to the Confederate dead?
In doorways, racists gibber at such antic beauty.
9.
We were there. This is the throne. We sat
by turns on her chair. The chair
was made of water
and felt like knees when we sat down.
In sanctity we sat and read and ruled
and the afternoons stretched out at our feet and yawned.
10.
Rest between renaissances.
Rest for marble and rest for gold
the Opels of tourists streak through rapeseed fields
in the magic Saarland twilight
where dark soldiers study the rising moon.
11.
I crossed all those rivers.
I was born for bridges,
privileging crossing over,
really just wanting to walk in the sky,
in Newark or Kingston or Highbridge or over Humber
you can do it, one great gesture
so little motor people just like me can go
over sacred moving water,
and every one of them a goddess is,
Ryan / Rhine / Rhiannon,
and still Annan's self delves water's tale.
12.
I wear this cross around my neck:
sympathy for the victim
odd to show it by the mark
that tortured Him.
I wear these shackles round my heart
bone white, Adam's ribs.
Criss-cross, bare skin, well meant lie,
I raise the red flag in the cemetery.
13.
Investigations of an absent theme,
Sir Edward, this would be music
only if you listen, this would be meaning
only if you find (I can't) a theme
to hold this tune together,
I can whistle something that makes no sense
but still the wind is physical, is breath,
says me, means you, the wind is true,
fingers can still touch me and touch you.
14.
I had a theme
but lost it in Los Angeles
when a pregnant lady with a lisp
looked me in the eye
I had a theme once
and in India it got washed away
down the hillside in a soft monsoon
while I watched the gravestones say their prayers
I had a theme again and held it
warm in my mouth like a bite from a peach
so sweet and thick the meaningful, the juice
dribbled down my chin and chest
so everyone who saw me knew what I would say,
they laughed at me until I swallowed it
(nothing more crushing than agreement,
consensus silences all music)
I had a theme at last
a kind of shapely pouting silence
a bunch of words beyond my grasp
all I could do was say them so I did.
Autumn 1993

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